"Former Google CEO predicts the internet will split in two by 2028 — and one part will be led by China"
From CNBC:
Eric Schmidt, who has been the CEO of Google and executive chairman of its parent company, Alphabet, predicts that within the next decade there will be two distinct internets: one led by the U.S. and the other by China.
Schmidt shared his thoughts at a private event in San Francisco on Wednesday night convened by investment firm Village Global VC.
The firm enlists tech luminaries — including Schmidt, Jeff Bezos, Bill
Gates and Diane Green — as limited partners, then invests their money
into early-stage tech ventures.
At the event, economist Tyler Cowen asked, "What are the chances that the internet fragments over the years?" Schmidt said:
"I think the most
likely scenario now is not a splintering, but rather a bifurcation into a
Chinese-led internet and a non-Chinese internet led by America.
If
you look at China, and I was just there, the scale of the companies
that are being built, the services being built, the wealth that is being
created is phenomenal. Chinese Internet is a greater percentage of the
GDP of China, which is a big number, than the same percentage of the US,
which is also a big number.
If you think of China as like 'Oh
yeah, they're good with the Internet,' you're missing the point.
Globalization means that they get to play too. I think you're going to
see fantastic leadership in products and services from China. There's a
real danger that along with those products and services comes a
different leadership regime from government, with censorship, controls,
etc.
Look at the way BRI works – their Belt and Road Initiative,
which involves 60-ish countries – it's perfectly possible those
countries will begin to take on the infrastructure that China has with
some loss of freedom."
The Belt and Road is a
massive initiative by Beijing to increase China's political and economic
influence by connecting and facilitating all kinds of trade, including
digital trade, between China and countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle
East and Asia.
Schmidt's predictions
come at a time when his successor at Google, CEO Sundar Pichai, has
stirred up controversy around the company's strategy in China.
Reportedly, Google has been developing "Project Dragonfly,"
a censored version of its search engine that could appease authorities
in China. The project allegedly included a means to suppress some search
results, booting them off the first page, and a means to fully block
results for sensitive queries, for example, around "peaceful...MUCH MORE
